North Shore Rescue pulls unconscious 73-year-old e-biker from the bush

This story has been amended to correct an error in where NSR met BC Ambulance. It was Inter River Park, not Bone Creek.

North Shore Rescue members say a man his 70s had a bit of luck on his side after an e-bike crash left him injured and unconscious almost 10 kilometres into the backcountry, Wednesday afternoon.

According to the team, the 73-year-old local man was riding on trails just northeast of the Seymour Dam when he slid out on some gravel and crashed.

A pair of hikers found him out cold and bleeding some time later, and raced to the dam to alert Metro Vancouver staff. When the call came in to North Shore Rescue, the team was already assembled for a training session with Talon Helicopter’s new hoist-capable AS365N2 Dauphin.

“As luck would have it, we had a crew that was five minutes away with an aircraft, with a doctor on board, with all the gear we needed,” he said.

The team landed at the dam and quickly got their patient packaged up to transport him to a waiting ambulance at Inter River Park.

In addition to being knocked out, the man had a puncture wound on his chest, from being impaled on a branch. Danks said he likely had head and spinal injuries as well.

By the time they got the man to paramedics, he was conscious but in a lot of pain, Danks said.

Danks said it’s always best to travel with someone else when on the trails, or at the very least, let someone know where you’re going and when you plan to be back. Were it not for the hikers finding him, it could have been a long time before anyone even realized he was missing.

“Because he'd been knocked unconscious, they weren't really too sure how long he'd been there. The frequency of people being in that area on a weekday is pretty low,” Danks said. “It was his lucky day, for sure, even though that happened.”